Lover
by Sweetheart Seer
Summary: "Jesus," she whispered as she stared down at the body. The letters carved into the dead girl's skin sent shivers down my spine. Glaring up at me, the word LOVER burnt itself into my mind. Scorpius Malfoy saw terrible things daily. Yet when he and his partner, Rose Weasley, are given a blood chilling case of a dead girl, enshrouded with mystery, his life would never be the same


**A/N: First off, I would like to say thanks to anyone who bothered to read this mess, and secondly I would like to apologize in advance for the fact that it is in fact in first person POV. I normally hate that as much as the next person, but I couldn't capture the emotion I wanted in third.**

...

I've never been one to beg. Something in the practice has never sat well with me. And contrary to the belief of girlfriends past, it is not because I grew up in a cold home, a callous home, with a distant father who taught me that to beg was to show weakness. No, my home was warm, filled with my mother's too loud laughter at my father's too dark jokes. I was taught from a young age that begging for forgiveness, for acceptance, when you know in your heart that the situation calls for just that, is showing strength. Instead, begging coils itself under my skin, a labyrinth of self-loathing, self-pity, self-doubt, self-validation. I loathe myself, I pity myself, I doubt my self, I validate myself. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Because of this, my aversion to begging, I felt no pressure to apologize to the woman who slid out of bed next to me, no need to ask her forgiveness. After all, we both knew it was not her name I said while moving on top of her, but I didn't care. I couldn't even remember her name and I doubt she remembered mine. To her, I would just be the lousy fuck she met at the bar, and to me, she would always be the woman who wasn't Rose.

In the harsh, revealing morning light, I saw that her hair wasn't the right shade of red, her eyes were brown- not blue- and the crows feet around her eyes painted her as older than I first thought when encountered her in the dark bar. She was probably some newly divorced housewife out for a night with the girls- or whatever it was middle aged women did. Undoubtedly, she was flattered when a fit bloke chatted her up. So she probably couldn't care any less that I didn't remember her name, I know I didn't.

As she pulled on her clothes, the room filled with the unmistakably muddy, overripe, and utterly human stench of sex, I lit up and took a long drag from my cigarette. We exchanged no words as she left. I offered no goodbye, no "the door's that way," no offer for a cuppa or some breakfast, no "ring me sometime." But then again, neither did she.

As the door slammed shut behind her, most likely on her way to pick up her 2.5 kids from her sister- I had seen a text flash across her phone as she pulled herself from my rumpled sheets, I was left to my smoke and an empty bed. I took another drag and let it fill my lungs before exhaling to the point of near deflation on my part. In the silence, accompanied only by the faint whir of early morning traffic, my eyes fell to my mobile on the bedside table, and in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to call _her_ and beg.

...

My story isn't a happy one, I will caution you of that now, but it's my story and only I can tell it to the full extent of the truth. I'm sure others could try, not that anyone would want to attempt But, it needs to be told, for my sake and mine alone.

It would be useless for me to start at the beginning, because the beginning is pointless, meaningless filler. Instead, I'll start in the middle. Actually, you know what, I'll start wherever I damn please. It's my fucking story.

...

I wanted to catch bad guys, that's what I always told people. When asked what I wanted to do after finishing Hogwarts, I would confidently reply, "I want to catch bad guys." They would all laugh and make comments about how I would never make it as an Auror. It was never due to lack of intelligence, that I had in spades. But no one thought little Scorpius Malfoy had any shot in hell of being an Auror because, in the nicest terms, I was a goddamn wimp and I looked it. I was all sharp angles with no substance. Knobby knees, knobby elbows, knobby knuckles, fuck, even my face was knobby. Every part of me would knock together with each step.

When I was young, barely able to sit on a broom by myself, it was called "cute." It's how little boys were supposed to look. They would roughhouse and their skinny limbs would be a patchwork of bandages, scrapes, scabs, and scars. Come thirteen, it was a waiting game. Everyone told me it would be my turn soon, I would bulk up, lose the harsh edges and rough angles. By the time I was seventeen, it was a lost cause, I had decided. I had shot up like a beanstalk, but my limbs still seemed too long, my arms too spindly, my head too big for my body.

It was an embarrassment. Delicate, rounded features and a stick for a body- no way in hell anyone ever take me seriously if I held them at wandpoint. I would be a laughingstock and I knew it. Even though I had met the requirements for N.E.W.T.S without any issue, I knew, everyone knew, that if I was put up to any physical challenge, I would be fucking toast. So I gave up on that dream.

Instead I jumped into the first job I could find- working with my father as a junior Healer at St. Mungo's. The work was easy, boringly so, agonizingly so. All I had to do was mix potions under heavy supervision. That's all. That's it. The great Malfoy heir had resigned himself to stirring a pot for eight hours a day, seven days a week. After a year of this tedium, my father put his foot down. "Go out and find yourself," he insisted, "do something for Christ's sake." Utter bullshit, but I took the advice. After two or so years of that, or traveling, of wandering without a damn place to be, I was a changed man.

Lo and behold, puberty had finally struck, so it seemed. I grew into my body, shed the layer of baby fat that had still cushioned my face, lost the delicate femininity of my features, and thank Merlin in heaven above- I could finally grow fucking facial hair. So, three years after everyone else in my graduating class, I joined the Auror training program.

It was by far the hardest three years of my life- but in a way, the best. I have fond memories of late night practice sessions with pretty girls who would hex me one moment and snog me the next, of trainers sitting me down and giving me advice over firewhiskey after a hard day of getting my ass handed to me on a silver platter. Hell, I even look back on learning how to shoot a muggle gun with wistfulness. "It's an old wizarding motto since the beginning. Arrows fly faster than hexes, if you're trained right, that is. Bullets- well those fly even faster," I remember being told.

But that shit was easy compared to what was about to come.

After I finished training, I was thrown headfirst into the Investigative Department- a branch of the Auror division that specialized less in hunting dark wizards, and more on wizard related crimes- magic not always included. ID had a reputation. Not a good one either. When I walked in, a few people patted my shoulders and shook their heads. muttering "poor Greenie" under their breaths. It wasn't long before I learned that you saw some sick shit in ID. I won't lie to you, there were many instances in which I wish I had applied for Ministry of Magic Witch Watchers, hell, even the Department of Intoxicating Substances would have been a step up if it meant I could sleep at night.

I'd been working solo in ID for a little over a year when the rumour mill began turning like crazy. As a desk jockey- considering there was an odd number of members in the department and you don't very well take on an ID case without a partner, so of course the new guy was left solo- I was dying for something, anything of interest to happen. From what I had gathered, an operative was coming back from a two year long undercover mission- which meant I had a partner coming my way.

From the things people were saying, I was scared goddamn shitless. For starters, it was a woman. The number of women in ID was, and still is, pathetically low. Out of the twenty some ID Aurors, there were only two women at that time. The Auror leaving undercover would make three. It takes some serious balls to make it as an IDA as a woman. The blokes tend to be sexist pigs half the time. Who am I kidding, _most_ of the time. On top of some grade-A kahunas, she had apparently held her own in a gunfight with a half crazed squib after he broke her wand- her Glock versus his Uzi. She left with two bullets, one to the shoulder and the other to the gut. In less than a week, she was up on her feet and working a case.

That was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to her legacy. If those chauvinists were praising her like that, I had a right to cower with my tail between my legs.

"Pretty Boy!" Marcus O'Flannery, head of the department since it's induction into the Auror program twenty-four odd years beforehand after wizard society became more integrated with muggle affairs, hollered from his office. I shot up from my desk, whacking my knee against the underside of the hard oak. Yes. They called me Pretty Boy. Fucking hated that name. I sighed, wondering what the hell I had done wrong _that_ time, before heading into the cluttered space he called his office.

Papers ringed with coffee stains, crumpled sweets wrappers, files left open, papers strewn out- it was a pigsty and I always left wondering how the man got any work done at all.

He slouched down into the creaking leather chair. I winced as it groaned under his weight, but quickly shut the door as he gestured lazily. "Have I done something wrong, sir?" I questioned slowly, shifting from foot to foot. Four years had passed yet I still felt like the gawky boy who stirred potions for a living whenever I stood in front of him.

O'Flannery waved his hand lazily, once again, before straightening up in the chair just slightly. I could all but hear him grunting his usual spiel, "been working as an Auror for forty-six years, smoking just as long, gonna sit how I damn well please." He looked at me and squinted. He squinted constantly but no one had the guts to tell him to get some damn glasses. "You're going to be partnered up with Weasley, rookie. She's got four years in this department and that's more than a lot of people can handle. Yet, somehow I think you could manage to chase her out." I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or insulted. I assumed the latter. "So don't." He punctuated the end of the sentence by pulling a fat cigar from his blazer pocket, lighting it with a quick wave of his fingers.

I pushed my hair from my fave and cleared my throat a bit uncomfortably. "Uh...which Weasley, sir? There _are_ quite a few of them ..." I dragged on slowly, having to pull the words from my throat. He gave me a look, all but asking if I had been dropped on my head as a tyke.

"Rose, Malfoy. Rose Weasley. She's been working an undercover sting op in cooperation with Intoxicating Substances to track down a murder-happy smuggling ring, but the op has come to a close and the ring had been shut down." O'Flannery took another long puff. "She hasn't worked in the field in almost two years. Which is why she's getting thrown in with you," he gestured with the burning end of the cigar in my vague general direction, "instead of her former partner. Kernan was already given a new partner when she left and, well, you're all that's left."

I shifted under his scrutinizing gaze once again as he stared me had managed to insult me and wound my pride twice in less than three minutes. If I hadn't been so peeved, I might have even been impressed. I opened my mouth to speak but he waved me off, and that was the end of that conversation.

For the next few days, I was left to listen to the rumours, the half-truthful stories, the entirely blatant lies. I quite honestly wasn't sure what to believe. I had known Rose in school by name only. My main academic competition and we hardly exchanged more than five words in the seven years we shared classes and prefect rounds. By the time Rose stepped into the ID offices, I don't know what I was even expecting. A cat suit? James Bond? One thing that was for certain was the fact that I was not expecting a tiny fairy of a woman who was struggling to balance a cup of coffee on top of a box filled with office supplies.

Her entrance was met with a smattering of applause and some informal greetings, and that was that. Rose carried the box over to an empty desk that had been left to gather dust in her absence and quickly began to unpack her things, taking quick sips of her coffee here and there. I watched her curiously, trying to discern if she really was as terrifying as she had been made to seem. One thing was for sure, Rose sure as hell didn't look the part.

She seemed to have not grown since finishing school- though she still was rather tall for a woman. Narrow shoulders, slender limbs and fingers, big blue eyes, soft features, an upturned nose, and a waist I could easily wrap both of my hands around, she looked more doll than witch. I remembered her hair had been longer when I knew her before, but as she unpacked, I was almost surprised to see that her dark red curls had been cut to around her chin. Merlin, I was in love.

I paused for a moment before clearing my throat and walking up to her, tapping her on the shoulder. Rose swivelled around, eyebrows raised as she gave me the once over. "Malfoy? Little Scorpius Malfoy? It really is you," she snorted and set down a stapler, "well I'll be damned. You finally stopped looking like a scarecrow reject and entered the big boy world," she drawled with a cheeky grin. That was when I promptly fell out of love and began to like her very much instead.


End file.
